A policy gap is threatening the Pentagon’s AI innovation pipeline

Source Domain: defensescoop.com

Morgan Plummer is Vice President of Policy at Americans for Responsible Innovation. He previously served as a Professor of Practice at the U.S. Air Force Academy and as Managing Director of the Department of Defense’s National Security Innovation Network.

The Trump administration’s recent decision to designate Anthropic a “supply-chain risk” marked an extraordinary escalation in the relationship between Washington and the tech sector. If this precedent holds, it could send a powerful warning to innovators: cooperate with the U.S. government on its terms, or risk being treated as a national security threat.

The episode is troubling on its own, but it also exposes a deeper problem. The United States is operating in a policy vacuum when it comes to governing how artificial intelligence can be used in military systems.

The current framework offers little clarity. Rather than statutory guardrails set by Congress, U.S. policy relies largely on general guidance from the Pentagon calling for “appropriate levels of human judgment” in military systems. That language may sound reassuring, but it leaves critical questions unanswered.

This ambiguity, along with the reality that traditional government contracts are not designed to resolve disputes over the basic rules, forces government agencies and technology companies to interpret the rules themselves.

The stakes are especially high because the future of U.S. military capability will depend heavily on technologies developed outside the traditional defense industry.

Artificial intelligence, advanced software, and autonomous systems are increasingly built not inside traditional defense contractors but in startups, research labs, and technology firms whose primary markets are commercial. Many of these companies have little history working with the defense establishment. They are used to setting terms of service for how their products are used and imposing restrictions when…

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